With a wave of "highly publicized hirings in the off-season, NHL teams snapped up the best of a new breed of advanced hockey statisticians who have found ways to quantify the game," according to Jeff Klein of the N.Y. TIMES. The beginning of the '14-15 season "marks the start of the NHL’s Age of Analytics." While the concept "may have exploded over the summer, NHL clubs have long used analysts both inside and outside traditional power structures." The new statisticians "have been able to unlock many secrets of hockey" (N.Y. TIMES, 10/8). In Philadelphia, Frank Seravalli writes the "'Moneypuck' era of advanced statistics and metrics arrived in a big way in the NHL this summer." The Flyers in the offseason named Ian Anderson Manager of Hockey Analytics, though he is a "California native who has never played hockey." The Flyers "never publicized his hiring." Flyers GM Ron Hextall said, "Analytics is where we're going. ... I wouldn't say it's a huge part, but it's going to get bigger and bigger." Seravalli notes compared to baseball, football and basketball, hockey "remains the toughest sport to analyze through data." There are "few set plays, even fewer repetitive scenes." It is a "random, fast, dynamic, free-flowing sport with a complicated physical element" (PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS, 10/8). The GLOBE & MAIL's Cathal Kelly writes hockey fans and media will "spend most of the next eight months arguing about math." Kelly: "Welcome to the mainstreaming of the Analytics War. You are either for analytics systems ... or you are stuck so far back in time you risk marrying your grandmother." Across the NHL this summer, a "tipping point of club presidents and general managers became cautious converts to the idea that analytics might have value." It is the "intersection of Big Data and a sport that hasn’t changed in any fundamental way since the 19th century" (GLOBE & MAIL, 10/8).
